


About A Light-Year From Reality

by cantthinkofausername_B_Pike



Series: Carry On Countdown 2017 [16]
Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell, Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe, Baz is Hopeless TM, Carry On Countdown, Crossover, M/M, pynch is a thing, snowbaz is not yet a thing, some sort of post-trk where cabeswater is back
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 07:15:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12978867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cantthinkofausername_B_Pike/pseuds/cantthinkofausername_B_Pike
Summary: Simon and Baz are fighting when Simon goes off, and they both end up in a place they've never been before. Only they're not alone.





	About A Light-Year From Reality

**Author's Note:**

> So spoiler alert this is post-TRK. Also AU for Carry On. My lizard son Adam Parrish is all-knowing (not really but the Cabeswater deal is alive and well). When you're reading this, picture it like that scene in Deathly Hallows when Dumbledore and Harry talk in King's Cross. Or don't, it's up to you. Title from Dreams by Beck.  
> So this is my first foray into writing TRC characters and I am absolutely terrified of messing up characterization.

This moment had happened so many times, in so many places, but every time it was the same. Baz says something, or does something, or looks a bit too suspicious. Simon gets mad. Baz fires back collected words aimed for Simon’s weaknesses; Simon splutters angrily as his temperature ticks up. This time is no different.

They are in the Wavering Wood. Trees and brambles circle around them, spectators to the Simon-and-Baz show. The centerpieces stand in a clearing, shouting at each other over the dead body of a _were_ -elk whose antlers crookedly stab the dirt.

“You sent that thing out here to kill me!” Simon shouts, waving the Sword of Mages dangerously close to Baz. His hair is a mess, his clothes torn, eyes alight with anger and fear.

“If I kill you, it won’t be with a _were_ -elk! How would that even work?” Baz spits back, voice dripping with disdain.

“You’re always plotting. I’m sure you’ve figured it out!”

Baz rolls his eyes. “I’m not plotting anything _this_ idiotic, Snow. You’re the only one dumb enough to think that up.”

With every word, Simon’s magic grows stronger, more uncontrollable. It swirls around them, invisible currents of power. The air is a powder keg ready to explode. Baz fires a shot about Simon’s parents, lighting the fuse. Simon goes off in flames, missing (protecting?) Baz but incinerating the nearby vegetation and vaporizing the offending corpse.

Their vision goes white.

 

When Simon opens his eyes, he still can’t see. Everything around him is white. The longer he looks, the more his formerly featureless surroundings resolve into scenery. Trees and flowers and grass in shades of white appear until he’s standing in a monochrome forest. It’s not the Wavering Wood anymore, this forest feels older, more watchful.

Beside him, Baz stands up. From the look on his face, he’s just as confused as Simon is.

“Did you do this?” Simon accused.

Baz glared at him. “No. Can you let it go? We’ve clearly got more important things to deal with. Like for instance: where are we?”

“How should I know?”

“It was _your_ magic, Snow.”

“ _You_ made me go off!”

“I did _not_!”

Their words are swallowed by the complete and total silence. There is no background noise: no air conditioner humming at a low frequency, no insects buzzing, no other people. 

Simon and Baz’s argument trails off, leaving them standing just far enough away from each other, fuming. After a second or an hour (time seems to be a concept they left behind in the Wavering Wood), footsteps break the silence. Hushed conversation joins them, followed by a short peal of laughter.

Staring into the distance, Simon begins to see two figures walking towards him. They’re close enough to hold hands; their sides brush together occasionally. Both look off around them as though the whitewashed forest is an interesting though unthreatening phenomenon they should take notes on.

The girl is short. Not the standard ‘short,’ where the person simply isn’t quite as tall as everyone else. This girl doesn’t rise to the shoulders of the boy she walks next to. As though to make up for her lack of stature, she wears bright, outlandish clothes she appears to have fashioned herself. Simon spots no less than three shirts, all different colors and all in some state of distress, jean shorts, and seemingly handmade crochet leggings. 

The boy with her would have receded into the background even without her brightness. Everything about him is faded, from his dusty hair that can’t decide whether it wants to be brown or blond to the shirt so worn that only specks remain of the logo it once held. He is pretty, but not in the standard, model fashion of handsome. Instead, he is pretty like space is pretty – fascinating, mysterious. Otherworldly.

Noticing them, the girl cocks her head to the side. “Who is this?” Her accent is American with a hint of something else Simon couldn’t identify.

“I don’t know,” the boy replies, sounding as though this whole situation is a rather interesting intellectual puzzle. His voice is slow and measured with a deep country drawl. “Who are you?”

Since Baz doesn’t seem inclined to respond, Simon answers for them. “I’m Simon,” he says, “and this is Baz.”

“How did you get here?” The boy asks. He’s far too in control of the situation, Simon thinks. How is this not the least bit unnerving to him?

“This twat,” Baz throws a stick at Simon’s head, “blew up and sent us here.”

“Blew up?” The girl asks, interested.

Baz rolls his eyes. “Boom,” he says sarcastically, pantomiming an explosion with his hands.

“Why are we here? Why are _you_ here? Who even are you?” Simon asks, talking as much with his hands as with his words.

The girl smiles, a sad little involuntary smile. “He’s -”

“Noah.” The boy echoes her smile. As if sensing their confusion, he continues. “Noah’s – Noah _was_ a friend of ours.” The ‘was’ lands heavily. “To answer your questions, I’m Adam and this is Blue.”

“Blue?” Simon echoes incredulously.

She narrows her eyes. “Don’t think you can make fun of my name. Were you expecting me to have some sort of girly, idiotic name like -”

Simon cuts her off hastily, sensing the beginnings of a rant. “No, it’s a fine name. A good name. I’ve heard some weird names, and yours is nowhere close to the weirdest. I mean, _his_ name is Tyrannus.”

Baz sighs. “You’re digging yourself into this hole, Snow. Shut up.”

Adam resumed talking as if he had never been interrupted. “I would assume your being here has something to do with the ‘blowing up’ he mentioned.” He waited a second, then added “What do you know about ley lines?”

Blue laughed. “You sound like Gansey now. Going to ask them about Welsh kings next?” Adam laughed too, while Simon and Baz looked on in confusion.

“What are ley lines?” Simon asked.

“And what do they have to do with this?” Baz added.

“Gansey would have a PowerPoint,” Adam chuckled. “Basically, ley lines are streams of energy that go all over the world, but only in straight lines. It’s concentrated magic. When you look around, do you see a forest?” 

“Yeah, but it’s all white,” Simon said at the same time that Baz said “There’s no color.”

Adam turned to Blue. “We’re in Cabeswater, right?”

“It looks like Cabeswater,” she mused, “but it doesn’t feel right. Too empty.”

“Exactly.” He levels his gaze on Simon. “How did you, as he put it, blow up?”

“The same way as always. We fight, and he sets me off.”

“His magic is all over the place,” Baz sneers. “It doesn’t take much. He’s the worst Chosen One ever.”

“Chosen One? Like Harry Potter?” Adam asks, and suddenly he doesn’t sound so adult anymore.

Blue nudges his shoulder. “Adam loves Harry Potter. He’s such a nerd.”

“Shut up,” Adam says amiably, elbowing her playfully. “Anyway, I think when you went off, you were on a ley line, and it acted like a power surge. And since we were in Cabeswater, which is on the same line, and Blue is a battery, the excess energy sent us here.”

Simon has no idea what Adam is saying, but he sounds like he knows what he is talking about. “How do we get back?”

Adam shrugs.

“Well, there’d better be a way, because I am _not_ staying stuck here with Snow.” Baz interjects.

“Yeah, this wouldn’t exactly be the long weekend I had in mind,” Adam says wryly.

Blue wiggles her eyebrows suggestively. “I bet it wouldn’t be.”

Adam rolls his eyes in exasperation. “So immature, Blue.”

“Missing someone?” She asks, still wiggling her eyebrows.

Adam groans. “Come on,” He stands up and motions for Baz to follow him. “I’ve got a theory I want to test out.”

 

They walk through the ever-shifting colorless trees. Adam leads, somehow walking with a destination in mind. They follow a river, which starts out as a small trickle of water from under a rock and widens to a small pond filled with small fish. Adam frowns at a large, flat rock, though Baz doesn’t see how that particular rock is any more wrong than the rest of this place. Eventually, they stop in a clearing in front of a tree trunk. The top has toppled over in some long-ago storm, and the trunk is hollow.

“Stand in there,” Adam says, pointing to the hollow.

Baz raises an eyebrow and shakes his head slowly, but walks into the tree. Scenes of the Wavering Wood, in full color, fill his mind. The images flash away and back again, from a different perspective each time but all undoubtedly the same place. The rapid transition to and from color to the white landscape is jarring.

“What do you see?”

“The Wavering Wood. Where we were, before Snow went off. It’s not there now, though. I’m only seeing it sometimes. Why am I seeing that?”

“You can come out from there,” Adam says, frowning. He sits, cross-legged, in the middle of the clearing. He closes his eyes and begins drawing unconsciously in the dirt.

“What’s going on?” Baz asks, standing right in front of Adam, who doesn’t respond. “Why did I see that?” He uses a tone of voice that does everything short of magically compel the listener to answer, yet Adam still ignores him. Irritated, Baz sits down a few feet away to wait.

 

“You love him,” Adam says several minutes later without opening his eyes. He says it like he is stating the obvious, in the way you would say “The earth goes around the sun.” 

“I _hate_ him,” Baz replies. He’s defensive and for him, defensive means cold words designed to hurt. He knows exactly what will send Simon over the edge; hell, he’s done it dozens of times. But he can’t seem to get a read on Adam. Baz isn’t in control of the situation, and he doesn’t like it.

“Yes.”

He doesn’t want to ask, but he has to know. Is he really that obvious, that a complete stranger could read him with his eyes closed? “Then why did you say I loved him?”

“Just because you hate him doesn’t mean you can’t love him.”

“Am I that obvious?” Baz sighs. It doesn’t feel good to let the secret out, as he always imagined it would. It’s been a weight, pressing down on him, and that weight is heavier now.

Adam must hear the self-loathing carried in the question, because he opens his eyes. He looks much, much older than the nineteen or twenty Baz had originally guessed. Something behind his eyes was ancient and wise beyond belief. “No. But I can read people.”

“Like a psychic, or something?”

He laughs. “Not quite. I saw it in your face. You look at him like he’s the sun, and you can’t stand it.”

“You sound like you have experience with this.”

“Blue used to look at a friend of ours like that. Turns out, he’s her true love. But mostly, you remind me of my boyfriend.”

Baz raises his eyebrows. “Really.” He mentally kicked himself. When Adam and Blue had arrived, he had assumed they were dating, simply because of how familiar they acted.

“How he used to be. He built a wall to protect himself from the world. So that he would never have to hurt again. And then he started to destroy himself.” Adam looked directly into Baz’s eyes, and the weight of the gaze unnerved him. It felt as though Adam was looking directly into his soul. “I don’t know what you’re going through, but don’t let that be you.”

Baz tries to ignore most of the story. He can feel it take root in him, though he’s not quite ready to talk about his life. Not yet. He’s concerned for Adam’s boyfriend, and scared by how well this stranger can read him, though deep down within himself Baz knows Adam’s right. He can’t spiral; he has to be strong and fight the war. Play his part. Or does he?

“I’ll try.”

“That’s all I’m asking.” He hides it beneath a pretty face and deep country drawl, but Adam is a powerful force. He’s already weathered his storm. Baz gets the feeling he’s right in the middle of his own.

“Is that why you made me come here? To tell me that?”

“Mostly,” Adam smiles crookedly. “But I really did need you to stand inside that tree.”

 

They walk back to where Simon and Blue still sit. They’re talking and laughing, Blue using her hands to illustrate some story she’s telling while Simon is laughing so hard he’s almost crying. Baz is struck with a sudden sadness, closely resembling jealousy, that Simon is laughing like that without him.

Adam gently sits down next to Blue. “I think it’s time for us to go now.”

“How?” Blue and Simon ask confusedly.

“We aren’t really here,” Adam explains. “We just have to decide to wake up.”

“It’s that simple?” Baz asks.

“When you went into the tree, you saw where you used to be, right? Because you never left. You’re still there.”

Simon’s mouth hangs open in astonishment. If there were flies here, he would run a high chance of catching one. “So we can just… go?” He closes his eyes and disappears. 

“I guess you do have someplace to be,” Blue says, winking at Adam. 

“Give it a rest, will you?” He replies fondly. 

They both disappear, one after the other, so that Baz is the only person left in the dreamscape of trees. He closes his eyes and thinks of the Wavering Wood, of his body there waiting for him, and of Simon. He opens his eyes when he feels cool grass on his arms. Suddenly, he’s laying on the ground staring at the canopy, and the sudden change gives him vertigo. Next to him, Simon is sitting up, rubbing his eyes.

Wordlessly, they stand up, avoiding the place the were-elk used to be, and make their way through the charred trees back to Watford. On the way, Baz can’t help but think of how easily Adam had read him.

He has to fight his own battles, and there are so many of them. They will take time, and he’s not ready to face some of them yet, but this is one he can deal with. It’s a step, at least.

“Simon?”

“Yeah?”

“Why do we fight?”

Simon stops walking for a moment to consider the question. “I don’t know.” After a few seconds, he adds “because you’re a prick.”

“We have the same fight every time. What changes?”

“Baz,” Simon asks, “what are you asking?”

Baz takes a deep breath. “I’m asking for a truce. If that’s okay.”

“It’s okay. This is going to be so _weird_ ,” Simon rambles.

“If you don’t want to,” Baz begins curtly.

“Oh no, I do. I’m just saying. You and me, not fighting. Who would’ve guessed?”

 _Me_ , Baz thinks, but the thought never makes it past his lips. Instead, the two of them walk away from the forest, barely making it back over the drawbridge before sunset. Every strange thing that happened today feels like the start of a new chapter. One that isn’t so much self-hatred and crying in the Catacombs, and maybe looks more like light.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments/kudos are greatly appreciated!


End file.
